Day Before Iowa Caucus, Donald Trump Surprised by His Own Lead – ABC News

When Donald Trump announced last summer that he was running for president, he didn’t expect to be leading the polls a day ahead of the Iowa caucus, the real estate mogul said this morning on ABC’s “This Week.”

Asked by “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos, “Did you ever imagine then that on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, you’d be leading — leading pretty big in every state?” Trump responded, “The truth is, no, I didn’t.”

“I’m somebody that knows how to win. I close the deal,” Trump added. “But I never thought I’d have 24 point leads in different states.”

Trump touted his support in Iowa and bashed rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whom he holds a slight lead over in the latest Des Moines Register / Bloomberg Politics poll. Trump called Cruz a “total liar” for saying the billionaire businessman supports a health care system similar to Obamacare.

“Look, Ted Cruz is a total liar. I am so against Obamacare,” Trump said, calling the policy a “disaster. “I’ve been saying it for two years in my speeches, I’m going to repeal and replace Obamacare. I don’t even know where he gets this.”

While Trump didn’t reveal specifics of his health care plan, he acknowledged he wants Americans covered by health care paid for by the government.

“If people have no money, we have to help people,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t mean single payer. It means we have to help people. If somebody has no money and they’re lying in the middle of the street and they’re dying, I’m going to take care of that person.”

“If this means I lose an election, that’s fine, because, frankly, we have to take care of the people in our country,” he added. “We can’t let them die on the sidewalks of New York or the sidewalks of Iowa or anywhere else.”

Trump continued other often-used attacks against Cruz, saying that “nobody likes him” and no senators have endorsed him.

“You can’t have just somebody standing in the Senate floor and nobody even endorses you,” Trump said of Cruz. “Here’s a guy with all of these senators — not one endorsement of Cruz, because he’s a nasty guy. Nobody likes him and you’re not going to — you can’t run a country that way. It will be — it will be a total mess.”

Trump, who hasn’t received endorsements from any sitting U.S. representatives or senators, also said he would soon receive endorsements from Cruz’s colleagues in the Senate.

“I have great endorsements,” Trump said, adding that “many, many more are coming.” He received an endorsement from the lieutenant governor of South Carolina last week.

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